In U.S. Pat. No. 6,508,828, which is assigned to the present assignee and whose entire contents are incorporated herein by reference for the sealing devices and methods disclosed therein, a sealing device is disclosed for sealing a puncture hole in a vessel wall. This sealing device comprises an inner sealing member, an outer locking member, and a retaining member. The inner sealing member is adapted to be positioned at an inner surface of the vessel wall, while the outer member is adapted to be positioned at an outer surface of the vessel wall. In use, the inner and outer members sandwich the vessel wall, and are held together by the retaining member, to thereby seal the puncture hole in the vessel wall. Other examples of sealing devices that comprise an inner member and an outer member, which are held together by an elongated retaining member, can be found in, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,593,422 and 5,620,461. Other types of medical closure devices are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,531,759 and 5,282,827, whose entire contents are incorporated herein by reference for the closure devices and methods disclosed therein. These devices have an inner member in the form of an anchor member and an outer member in the form of a plug.
The retaining member can be provided in the form of a loop, which has been made from a thread, suture, monofilament, multifilament, or some other thread-like structure, the ends of which have been joined together by means of a knot. As an alternative, the ends of the thread-like element can be glued together to thereby form a loop.
In the U.S. Patent Application Publications Nos. 2005/0137625 and 2007/0239209, whose entire contents are incorporated herein by reference for the sealing devices and methods disclosed therein, the drawbacks with knotting and gluing are discussed, and an alternative approach is presented, wherein the ends of, for example, a suture are joined together by embedding one portion of the suture within another portion of the same suture, such that as tension in the suture increases, the different suture portions are held together by the friction then acting between these suture portions.
The present invention is therefore directed to an improved method of joining an elongated, thread-like element into a loop suitable for holding at least an inner member being part of a sealing device in place, and a general object of the invention is to provide a sealing device comprising an inner member which is attached to a loop, which is manufactured by this improved method.